Today we finished up our current case in Chill. On we go!
Last time, four of the envoys (Father Will, Blake, Samantha, and Jennifer) spent most of the night running house to house dealing with Mr. Buck, and Jordan and Willa were nowhere to be found. So let's catch up with them.
They leave the restaurant and start chatting about Mr. Buck and his head, and how they might be reunited and what that might accomplish. Jordan texts Elle, the girl who found Mr. Buck's head, and asks if they can stop by tomorrow to borrow it. And then they look around and realize that they're not where they should be - they're way the hell out in Bruneau. In fact, they're right next to where they were when they encountered a very powerful ghost over three years ago.
Concerned with how this happened, Willa starts to turn the car around, and then looks in the backseat and sees her father.
(Do note that Willa killed her father in self-defense; it's the fact that he haunts her that got her into SAVE.)
So Willa kinda freaks out and starts driving straight ahead, gripping the wheel with white knuckles. Jordan grabs her lip balm and makes a mark on the dash to activate Line of Defense. The ghost lunges forward and yells "NO" and strikes Jordan, but then the ward goes up and he vanishes.
They drive on the down the road a ways and Willa starts to calm down. Jordan tries to text the others, but there's no signal out here. They figure they should be out in civilization soon, but then the right front tire explodes.
Willa loses control and the car careens off the road onto the dirt. Fortunately they're both wearing seatbelts and don't suffer serious injury (just Mild, haw haw). Willa sees her father pacing in front of the car, drinking from a phantom whiskey bottle (Old Crow, if you're interested). He hurls the bottle at her and she flinches, but it vanishes when it hits the windshield. He disappears, and Willa and Jordan talk this out.
They don't want to wait until sunrise, but they don't really want to call anyone anyway (even if they could), because that might put them in danger. They decide to use the same trick they used on June Stevens, the poltergeist - Willa will summon him with Voice of the Dead, and Jordan will draw a Line of Defense around them.
Willa activates Eyes of the Dead, but doesn't see her father. They get out of the car and Willa spots him - sitting in the bed of the truck. He glances toward Jordan and she suddenly loses equilibrium, but activates a Mental Shield and cancels the effect. Meanwhile, Willa uses her Voice of the Dead discipline and traps her father, while Jordan draws a circle around them...but now Willa is trapped with her father's ghost.
Her mouth goes dry and sick, and she smells cheap whiskey. She gags and tells her father that he's the most disgusting person she's ever met, and demands to know how to get rid of him. He tells her - he wants to see her beg for her life, and he wants to hear her say he was right. Willa refuses; they both know it'd be a lie. But he's telling the truth, and Willa can see that.
He finally gets fed up, though, and Willa finds her voice disappear. She forces him out and he punches her in the head. She follows up with a strike to his temple, but isn't able to focus and it goes right through him. He punches her again and cracks her ribs, and, summoning all of her strength, she tackles him right against the barrier.
Willa collapses, sweating. Her father is still trapped in the circle, but just then the police arrive. He calls a tow truck for them, and Jordan carefully keeps the circle intact. It takes hours, but they eventually get back to Boise, where they try to call the others, but without luck. They head back to the ranch, send one last text ("Sorry. We're OK. Explain in morning.") and get some sleep.
And indeed, in the morning, Blake is there and Father Will arrives shortly thereafter. They talk about what happened a bit, and then start planning out their approach. Jordan and Willa head out to Elle's house to get the skull from her, and they drop Blake and Will at Blake's car (whereupon he goes and picks up Samantha and Jennifer from the hospital). Elle gives Jordan the skull without any hitch, and Jordan looks it over, but sees no obvious cause of death. The skull is clean and bleached.
They head back to the ranch and gather round the skull. Samantha notes that while Mr. Buck has been appearing the neighborhood for years (based on the reports of hornets and blackouts), he only got aggressive last year - which was the August after Elle found his skull. When the skull was just in the woods, he didn't hurt anyone, apart from the occasional hornet stings. Maybe they could return the skull to him? Or maybe it needs to be buried with him?
Blake asks if Willa could summon Mr. Buck the way she has other ghosts, and she isn't sure - normally it only works with incorporeal creatures, but they aren't sure where Mr. Buck goes during the day. She tries it, and Jordan circles her again to keep anything nasty from getting out.
It works, up to a point. Willa feels a presence, but it's not strong (or focused?) enough to communicate in words. All she feels is fear and the sense of being trapped. She tries to reach out and calm it down, and it seems to settle a bit. And then she shows it the skull, trying to communicate that they wish to give it the skull, but something gets lost in translation and she feels a thousand hornets sting her.
Desperately, she tries to picture the place where the skull was found, but that just makes it worse. She sees herself as Mr. Buck, sawing through a dead limb with the chainsaw, but then his ladder wobbles, his saw slips and hits his neck, his muscles clench up and the blade cuts right through. His head rolls away, and the last thing he sees before dying is one little hornet land on his nose.
Willa doubles over in terror and Jordan ends the circle. She explains what she saw, and curls up into a ball to sleep. The others talk over their next move. They decide to take the skull to Mr. Buck's grave (Jennifer does some quick research and finds that all reports indicate the head was never found, so presumably he was buried without it) and see if that does anything. They put Willa to bed; she's pretty exhausted.
They find Mr. Buck's grave and set down the skull, but see no immediate response. Samantha uses Postcognition to look back to sunrise, to see if Mr. Buck materializes here, but she sees nothing - apparently he appears near where he died. They consider looking ahead to see what would happen if they dig up the grave to reunite body with head, but Premonition doesn't allow Samantha to see that far. They decide they'll come back closer to sunset.
Meanwhile, Willa wakes up, but finds she can't see or hear. She sits up and feels something sit next to her. She lashes out at it, but doesn't connect with anything and winds up on the floor. She tries to cry out, but she again has no voice. Something kicks her in the ribs, and she hears her father growl "Just wanted you to know." Her senses return and she crawls into a corner and holds her knife out. She activates Eyes of the Dead, but he's nowhere to be seen.
Darnell comes in and talks her down, gets her up, and takes her into the living room. Auntie Dee comes in with Sweet Baby Jesus and keeps her company, while Darnell wraps her ribs (again). He gives her some very strong pain drugs and then texts Jordan.
The others head back to the ranch and everyone rests a bit. Jordan talks to Darnell and Jennifer, and they consider whether Willa should stay here, but Darnell points out that physically she's not badly injured. Can they afford to leave her here, especially with Jennifer and Samantha also injured?
Willa wakes up and they explain the plan to her, and the group heads back to the graveyard. Samantha uses Premonition and sees Mr. Buck standing at his grave as the others finish filling it back in. He drops his saw, the hornet's nest falls off his neck, and he vanishes.
Samantha laughs, not able to believe it's that simple. Father Will calls Detective Jackson to ask him to keep people clear of this cemetery, and he agrees. Jordan sets Willa up in a lawn chair with a Line of Defense around her. And then they all start diggin'.
It takes a few hours to get down to the vault, and ask they start prying it open, they hear hornets. All the electronics go out, and a massive swarm of hornets closes in. Willa panics and tips the chair backwards, and the skull rolls away. Mr. Buck lunges for it and Jordan tries to make a bigger circle around the whole grave. Samantha grabs the skull and Willa yanks her into the circle...but Jordan can't muster the strength to activate the discipline. Mr. Buck gestures at Samantha and she feels a wriggling in her nose, but powers through and the effect doesn't take. She tosses the skull to Jennifer, but Mr. Buck unleashes a huge horde of hornets and they sting Jennifer within an inch of her life. Jordan manages to get the circle active, and all the bugs vanish, but Jennifer is badly hurt.
She drops the skull, but Blake grabs it and puts it on the neck of the corpse in the coffin...and everything goes quiet. Mr. Buck drops his saw, and then brushes the hornet's nest away, revealing his head. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and vanishes.
The envoys fill in the grave and take Jennifer to the hospital, and Will texts Jackson to let him know that it's over. Jackson isn't quite ready to join SAVE, but he becomes an ally to the HQ, which is likely to be hella useful going forward. The others set about recovering - Samantha is a bit phobic about wasps, Willa is rattled by her encounter with her dad - but the case is closed successfully. Father Will is pleased to note that redemption, of a sort, might still be possible for creatures of the Unknown.
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